Portage Sentinel

Quicksilver more valuable than its placers of gold. The high price of quicksilver, so important a material for extracting gold from its combinations, has hitherto prevented the working of many of the mines. Should this treasure continue to be as abundant as it promises to do, and as this specimen of cinnabar indicates, the quicksilver mines of California will probably prove the richest in the world."

In regard to the genuineness of the California gold, the New York Tribune says: "A very intelligent officer of the Navy, who has been recently over the entire gold region of California, for the purpose of examining the matter thoroughly, stated to-day, that by the month of March we shall be receiving from California three millions per month in gold. This officer himself has a considerable quantity of the gold, which has reached New Orleans and other large amounts he knows to be on the way. The Mazatlan correspondent of Messrs. Howland & Aspinwall, writes that $100,000 worth of gold has been received there, which has been assayed and proved to be 22 to 23 carats fine, which is as near as may be pure gold, too pure for coining or mechanical purposes. This fact sets at rest the doubts about the genuineness of the metal."

The specimens of gold sent by the War Department to the Mint at Philadelphia, are pronounced to be "genuine." An assay of California gold, made in New York, proved it to be 21 carats fine."

The accounts of the immense quantities of gold found in California, have caused a vast number of cases of yellow fever in the States, and companies are being formed in many of the principal cities of the Union, to start immediately for that country to make their fortunes in her rich mines.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, in looking at this new El Dorado, closes an article with the following sensible remarks:

We might tremble for our country, in view of the mineral wealth which it is likely to acquire so differently from the Divine ordination making it the product of the sweat of the brow, if we did not regard the rough and sturdy and energetic Anglo-American character as superior to the allurements and the vices of wealth we have named. It is a character of too much sternness and solidity, and too proud of the virtues it has won over the wilderness, and by means of steam, lightning and freedom, to succumb and sink into demoralization from any cause. Rich as the mines of California may be, the farmer of Ohio, with his plough, the mechanic of Cincinnati with his jack-plane, are mining more surely, and in a less troublesome and toilsome way, than the runaway sailors or any of the gold-hunting adventurers upon our Pacific Coast,—since they are producing that which must command this gold, and the more of it the more plentiful the precious metals may become. Yes; industry is the true alchemy—the only Philosopher's Stone that avails anything,—as it is, indeed, the source of all wealth and power among any people.